11-14-2017, 08:50 PM | #271 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
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Fred Brackin |
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11-15-2017, 01:20 PM | #272 | |
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: New York, NY
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
It seems like late TL 7 humanity couldn't predict something coming in a hundred years from out of the solar system.
And anything big enough to cause serious damage to the Earth in orbit around the sun would have been seen by the twentieth century. And no interstellar object would go right into an orbit that could eventually hit Earth. In short, no way to do my 'humanity knows that an asteroid will hit in a 100 years' idea. What about a comet with an extremely long parabolic orbit, extending from near the sun to out into the Oort Cloud? Imagine that it is currently out in Oort Cloud space, takes hundreds of years to complete an orbit, but its trajectory can be calculated (perhaps using historical records of earlier sightings), and appears that it will hit the Earth in 100 years. Is that plausible? Sort of a 'death by Halley's Comet.' Quote:
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11-15-2017, 02:01 PM | #273 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
While tails are enormous, I think that loads of people were a little scared when Earth went through Halley's in 1910.
(Quick checking... woot, I remembered correctly. That rarely happens.)
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11-15-2017, 04:27 PM | #274 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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11-15-2017, 06:43 PM | #275 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
Out to the Oort Cloud would be a long orbit indeed. If you want a 100 year periodicity you'd need a much shorter one. only a little longer than Haley's 76 year period.
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Fred Brackin |
11-15-2017, 07:20 PM | #276 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
An Oort Cloud comet would have a period of millions of years and could come from any angle of the ecliptic. It would also be visible to any civilization for months or even years before it hit if it was large enough to end human civilization (which would be cold comfort, as we do not really have the technology to deflect anything moving 30 km/s).
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11-16-2017, 12:53 AM | #277 | |||
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
Figured I'd revisit this. I like a number of these possibilities.
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Those regions with strong group identities and limited political strife were able to stabilize. Those that also has repairable industrial capacity recovered over the next few decades and by 2020 some cities were even rebuilding their computer networks. Other regions weren't so lucky, either stuck as effectively feudal substates of industrial regions, or else still anarchic wastes a generation after the storm. Pre-storm military strength was of only moderate importance, as the electrical interference overcame even the best hardening and was capable of affecting even deeply buried equipment. Plus, even the working equipment would only last so long... Quote:
The peak radiation levels were reached from western Canada eastward at the 51 degree line around the pole all the way around and terminating in eastern Siberia, but dangerous radiation levels covered the entire northern hemisphere and much of the south as well. While the atmosphere seemed to be ineffective, surface defenses such as soil cover and such were as effective as normal. The extreme radiation ultimately killed some 15% of the population over the 20 hour irradiation, and an additional 20% sickened and died over the following two years. Of those, the vast majority of the victims came from the global north. The Falklands were only moderately affected, in part due to Vega being over the horizon only briefly even in the northenmost part of the chain. It became one of the major organizational hubs after the wave. In the north, subterranian bunkers became the centers of reconquest. Aside from the eeree dead trees, the irradiated land was fairly safe to recover. Civil collapse, as seen elsewhere, caused more deaths than the actual disaster did, especially in the equitorial and southern nations. Quote:
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11-16-2017, 01:18 PM | #278 | ||||||||
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
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By 2020, pressurized enclaves house what is left of technological society. Don't let the technology imply anything fancy, however; for the most part these enclaves are made by lining an existing building with plastic and then installing a compressor. The other remaining humans live on the coast itself in a permanent low-oxygen haze. The total population is now only in the hundreds of millions, split roughly evenly between the dizzy scavengers and the closed enclave members. Quote:
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By 2020, the antimatter sleet has slackened somewhat, meaning the auroras aren't so bright, but there's still plenty of antimatter dust to harvest. Quote:
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for magical effects to occur on planets (for reasons,) but once someone in space started working with magic seriously, it didn't take long to, for instance, produce a mundane spacecraft capable of landing on Earth and recover people using magic. It's also quite easy to fly vertically into the mana feild and then use magic to provide the majority of orbital velocity. Altogether, most of humanity left Earth for the heavenly world being constructed among the stars. Someone who arrives here by conveyor would find a mostly empty Earth populated by a few ideological holdouts, and a sky twinkling with alchemical lights. Quote:
The actual projection itself took the form of a change in consciousness and disassociation more like a drug experience than anything else. Most reliable accounts say that it wasn't specifically a feeling of traveling from one body to another, but rather "fading" out of being associated with a given body, experiencing a moment of simply not "being" anything in particular, and then fading back into possession of a body, the same one or a different one. Memories were transferred with the consciousness. About half of those that changed bodies found themselves in extremely different forms, meaning that a little over a billion people were, for instance, moved from an adult male body to an infant female body or the like. Some specific instances were particularly traumatic; there are three different occasions where those piloting an airline that crashed during the effects of the wave found themselves in a body that was far from the aircraft afterwards. The social disruption was less severe than in other situations. There was rough period of hunger and recovery, but since only a small portion of minds crossed extreme distances, most people were able to return to something like their old lives. The actual disaster itself was too bizarre to really respond to, although in general pretty much everyone alive considers it a given that identity isn't tied to physical body anymore. The lingering issue is that there are legitimate reasons to suspect that there has been some kind of alien infiltration in the process. Although millions of people went bodily missing in the catastrophe, most bodies were accounted for eventually. However, to this day many more people are still unaccounted for. With the scrambling of faces and names, it's impossible to be totally sure that a person is who they claim to be. The bizarre phenomenon would surely trigger a wave of strange conspiracy theories, but in the wake of the disaster there are signs of some kind of global management taking place, and even sober and rigorous security groups are concerned. Quote:
Last edited by PTTG; 11-16-2017 at 01:39 PM. |
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11-17-2017, 01:02 PM | #279 | |||
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
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Nor is it at all clear that the construction project would do anything anyway. It involves lofting an orbital ring above earth and the moon, plus coating the lunar far side with solar panels and a wide assortment of magnetic and laser generators. None of the systems rely on materials that exceed mundane material strengths, although they would be incredibly expensive to build. It's just not clear as of yet what the systems would do, or how they achieve the ultimate consequence of transporting all human consciousnesses to the alien homeworld, where they will be given new forms and a world of plenty. Nonetheless, more than half the planet's population, including many of the most wealthy, are united in putting the plan into action. Much of the rest of Earth isn't exactly going to fight against it. Only a small number of radicals actually oppose the construction and think that it' an attempt to trick humanity into exterminating itself -- although again the devices don't have any clear use as an earth-destroying tool either. By 2020, prototype loops are already being built on the lunar surface, and the first space conflict has taken place after rebels sabotaged an early attempt. In the US, which was perhaps more than other nations conflicted over the whole process, a police state is developing. Quote:
Unlike in many population catastrophes, this world had time and ability to shut down industrial processes safely. There were no notable industrial accidents here. As the hours dragged on, more and more civilians were drafted to record the psionic sound, (as a massive group effort could produce data that could be aggregated later). A handful of people already on edge started to act rashly within the first few hours, but for the most part things were orderly. It was around this point that linguists became convinced that the noise was a language and had structure. No attempts to block the signal were successful. For those parts of the world where the signal started around nightfall, the sixth hour represented the first real strain on mental health. Mental health officials, already themselves exhausted, tried providing pharmaceutical aid to critical personnel which allowed a small number of people to get some chemically assisted sleep, but the doses were dangerous enough as it was. By the sixteen hour mark, there was nobody who wasn't already exhausted of the signal, and every part of the globe had already started to encounter serious problems with social disruption. The gradual mental degradation of the planet resulted in a global mental breakdown. Densely populated areas were cacophonous as people tried to drown out the screeching with more pleasant sounds like car horns, or else attempted to deafen themselves (unfortunately even with eardrums destroyed the psionic signal kept coming through; only those born deaf really were resistant). Random mental breakdowns were common and all responders were stretched thin and exhausted as it was. As abruptly as it arrived, the psionic screeching ceased, leaving an exhausted humanity to recover. Only some seventy complete records of the screeching exist, and all of them disagree in some places over the exact tone, meter, and quality of the screeches, making a real translation of much of the signal impossible. The aftermath saw, first, everyone on the planet sleeping for sixteen hours straight. In terms of deaths, this was a fairly small disaster at only several million. However, everyone on the planet is suffering some kind of psychological damage or another. |
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11-17-2017, 01:35 PM | #280 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
Ascension-1
Ascension-1 is the textbook example of a Metamorphic Virus gone out of control. The point of divergence occurred during the Summer and Autumn Period of China with the destruction of the Qin by the Chu. Without the influence of the Legalist philosophy, the great burning of non-Legalist documents did not occur in the Chu Empire, allowing for the scientific revolution to occur in the Chu Empire in the 5th century AD. By 1000 AD, the Chu Empire had successful conquered the Earth through simply possessing a technologically superior civilization (the equivalent of early TL8). By 1500 AD, the Chu Empire had expanded throughout the Sol System and had achieved TL11 (TL12 in biotechnology). The Metamorphic Virus plague was an experimental longevity treatment that escaped the lab where it was located. By 1550 AD, the vast majority of the human species had been replaced by Ascended Ones through the Sol System. The last surviving remnant of humanity left the Sol System in 1600 AD in an STL colony fleet, as the Ascended Ones wanted any immune humans to leave the Sol System. The Ascended Ones gain ST+10, DX+4, IQ+4, HT+4, Appearance (Attractive), Combat Reflexes, Extended Lifespan 4, Less Sleep 4, High Pain Threshold, and Night Vision 4. Female Ascended Ones receive Reproductive Control while Male Ascended Ones receive Deep Sleeper. They also gain Gregarious, Intolerance (Human), and Sense of Duty (Ascended Ones). The Intolerance (Human) comes from an unconscious reaction to the scent of humans while the Sense of Duty (Ascended Ones) comes from an unconscious reaction to the scent of Ascended Ones. When a normal human is exposed to an Ascended One, the human must make a HT-3 roll to avoid becoming infected by the Metamorphic Virus. If they fail, they start to transform into an Ascended One and are capable of infecting any human being that they encounter. When the Ascension-1 was first discovered, a small outbreak occurred before the I-Cops were able to control the spread of the Ascended Ones on Homeline. The infected and transformed were annihilated by the I-Cops before the infection could spread and the Infinity is carefully monitoring Ascension-1 for anything that could lead to paratronic technology. While Infinity has developed an experimental vaccine against the Metamorphic Virus, Infinity knows that it would be incapable of mass production to prevent infection across hundreds of timelines if the Ascended Ones developed paratronic technology. |
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